


Nothing to do with the Wine

by doomcanary



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Aramis talks too much, Athos cynical? shurely not, Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Milady is a cowbag, Porthos is adorbs, Sleeping Together, d'Artagnan guilt trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1400590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcanary/pseuds/doomcanary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D'Artagnan has questions about Milady. Athos is willing to answer - some of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nothing to do with the Wine

All around them the clash of steel, harsh breathing and the shouts of onlookers ring; Treville's voice barks over the hubbub, admonishing one or other to keep their defence up, know when to back down. D'Artagnan raises his sword to salute Athos, and then something catches in his face, and he drops it again.

“Athos – I'm so sorry... if I'd known...”

Athos levels the tip of his sword at d'Artagnan's throat, and gazes at him not unkindly.

“I've been drinking for years to forget that woman,” he says, “and I'm not interested in you dragging her up again. Forgive yourself, boy. You were young, she is vicious, and what you _should_ be feeling is rage that she used you so. Did she decide you were a suitable bedmate before or after you had mentioned my name to her?”

d'Artagnan's face clouds at that; dear Lord, he is so very naïve at times.

“Your Constance is a better woman,” says Athos softly, “and patience may yet bring you many things. En garde.”

 

D'Artagnan follows him when they leave the sparring ground, and Athos lets the boy join him in his rooms. He clearly has more that he wishes to say. They sit down, and Athos produces a half bottle of wine. D'Artagngn drinks in silence for some time before he looks into Athos's eyes.

“Before she... left. Milady said to me...”

Athos waits.

“She said that your brother forced her, and she killed him simply as self-defence.”

Athos snorts. “Do you believe her?”

“Why would she lie?”

“Why does a sword cut, d'Artagnan? It's what she is.”

“Then what really happened?” The Gascon's pain and stubbornness is plain to see.

“I do not know,” says Athos carefully, “because if I had been there I would have stopped it, whatever it was. By the time I found them Thomas was already dead. But he was no more lacking in self-discipline than I am; indeed at the time he was courting the daughter of an estate nearby with a view to marrying. If Thomas had a flaw, it was that his curiosity did not know any bounds. He would have made a good scholar; he followed his thoughts wherever they led him.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“I believe he may have discovered something about her,” says Athos. “Something she did not wish her husband to find out.”

 

Truth be told, he thinks he knows very well what must have happened. In the face of Thomas's knowledge she would first have tried to seduce him to buy his silence – but Thomas's continence was a byword in the family, and to see his brother's wife behave so would only have confirmed to him her corruption. And so, Milady would have seen that her only recourse to silence honest Thom was a knife, and a tale of victimhood and woe.

Athos loves Thomas for that, in a way; because had he not had the strength to resist her, she would have forced him to choose between his brother and his wife. As it was, she made the choice for him, and so made his strategy simpler, in the end. He hates that part of himself that spared her; curses himself for drinking the time away. He might have had the steel to kill her had he spent those years in sober reflection instead.

 

“But surely that's not worth killing for!” d'Artagnan persists. “You loved her, didn't you? You would have forgiven her, surely.”

“Child,” says Athos contemptuously. “Have you not been in Paris long enough to see that some people are simply too far gone to save? Milady sold her soul many years ago, long before she ever knew me. Even had I not stumbled upon her with her hands still bloody, my forgiveness would have made no difference at all. The deed was done and had she been discovered, she would have lost everything. As my wife, for once in her life she had something to lose. I did love her, indeed, and yet I am also glad I discovered her, or she would have silenced me too and taken my land and my coin.”

 

He watches d'Artagnan's face, twisting with a melee of emotions; the boy doesn't want to believe it. So few people do, when faced with the true depth of human iniquity. It had been Milady who took Athos's innocence from him; before her, he too had believed that no-one could sink that low. He is grateful that the scales were taken from his eyes.

“You really think she would have killed you?” the boy asks finally.

“She is ambitious, and never satisfied with what she has. Sooner or later she would have grown bored, and I had little interest in court affairs. And a brother's murder is a dangerous secret to have; better to lay those who might suspect her to rest and become a rich widow, a prize to many men. As you, Porthos and Aramis well know.”

Then d'Artagnan asks a question that lances through Athos as if running him through.

“How can you love her?” he says. “How could you spare her life, after all that you knew?”

 

Because he does. Because that is how it has always been. Because the innocence she shattered is still inside him somewhere, wishing that the world didn't have to be so bad. Because he remembers the first flush of love, real for him whether or not she felt the same. Because she became part of him, when he fell in love with her. Because the scars of youth still show on maturity's hand.

Because in the end it's got nothing to do with the wine.

 

“When you are older, boy, you will understand.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the fallout from abusive, messy relationships isn't black and white. Sometimes we don't live in a simple world where it's easy to hate someone, however terrible the things they've done. That's particularly true when the abuser is simply recycling the treatment they themselves received, and has never had time to step back and grow as a person.
> 
> Which Milady very probably hasn't, when you think.
> 
> There's a fine line between Stockholm syndrome and wisdom, and it's often hard to tell which side of it you're on. Those are the days when you need your friends to remind you you're worth something in their eyes. I think I need to write a sequel to this where Porthos and Aramis do.
> 
> As for the whole Milady as rape victim feminist outrage thing... I just. I'm not getting into the argument. I hate the way people assume that just because we're Modern we must therefore be totally unprejudiced. We just haven't realised they're prejudices yet. 
> 
> Yeah. No shoulder chips in modern feminism, no gulfs of perception, no desperate lack of a balancing masculine view. No tendency to treat men as the enemy. Everyone knows women are the innocent ones.
> 
> If you'll excuse me, I'll be getting shitfaced in the Wren. If he needs a beer buddy, tell Athos where I am.


	2. None of Our Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scars must be taken care of over time.

Athos starts as the door to his quarters slams open, and is half way to his feet when he sees it's Aramis and Porthos coming in.

“Shocking weather,” says Aramis. “Cold as ice.”

“Freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” concurs Porthos.

“Good sort of night for staying in, to my mind.”

“Perfect.”

“Might I enquire -”

Aramis just talks over him. “Very good night for getting a great big dish of Serge's best venison stew, in fact, and settling down with some friends and a bottle of wine.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Porthos says, and plonks a heavy, sacking-wrapped dish on the hearth where it's warm. Aramis follows it with a fresh loaf of bread. Athos, apparently not in charge of this evening's entertainment, sits back down.

Aramis bustles about fetching cups and a bowl or two; Porthos is poking up the fire and warming his backside. Aramis by some sleight of hand manages to extract a bottle of the good wine from Athos's larder. He keeps it right at the back of the cupboard precisely because. Athos finds a bowl of steaming richness placed in front of him, and the dregs of his previous bottle sniffed, sneered at and tossed out of the window. Porthos and Aramis scrape chairs across the floor and settle down with gusto to their food.

“Don't wait for us,” says Aramis graciously, waving his hand. “Dig in.”

Athos looks from one to the other, meeting nothing but bland amiability, and starts to eat.

“Course it's none of our business,” says Porthos when the plates are empty, chasing the last of the gravy with a small piece of bread.

“Nothing to do with us at all,” Aramis chimes in.

“So if we should have happened to overhear d'Artagnan saying he'd managed to put his foot in his mouth again,” says Porthos.

“And happened a moment or two later to detain the young gentleman -”

“Grab him by the collar and shove him against a wall, he means,” Porthos cuts in.

“-purely in order to ask him what precisely he'd fucked up this time, well, then, it would still be none of our business at all to be concerned for yourself.”

“You're a grown man,” says Porthos. “I told him. Athos can take care of himself.”

“And I agreed,” says Aramis. “Athos is absolutely capable. He has a pistol and a sword for enemies, a sharp tongue for subordinates, and for everything else, he has the bottle.”

“I mean a man might argue,” says Porthos, spreading his hands to balance them like a scale, “that drowning your sorrows alone ain't a good idea.”

“But that, of course, would be none of our business.” Aramis folds his hands together, and smiles.

Athos looks from one to the other of them. Aramis's face is blithe, but in his eyes there's a flicker of concern. Porthos is what he always is, a rock for everyone else to lean on. His eyes are expressionless, but he's here, for Athos.

Something in Athos makes him rise to his feet and step away. The other two rise as well, and he steps back. Porthos and Aramis spread out and approach him from both sides of the table; the sideboard collides with his hip. They have cornered him neatly, good soldiers that they are. He feels, strangely, both flattered and disturbed.

"We only want to help you," Aramis says softly.

Athos lets his shoulders fall. “Very well,” he allows.

There's a moment's pause.

“Well come on then,” says Porthos. “I could use an early night.”

 

They finish the wine in the end, companionably, talking of little and watching the fire; Athos feels strangely warmed, whether by the unusually cheerful fire, the stew or the company he does not know. When he stands and moves for the bedroom Porthos and Aramis follow; once inside, what he is not expecting is for Aramis's hand to catch his arm and stop him, and Porthos to stand in front if him and furrow his brows in concentration as he unlaces his shirt. They strip him like that, gently, settle him on the bed to pull off his boots, and finally he's propped in his nightshirt, resting on his arms watching Porthos yawn and scratch his beard while Aramis combs out his hair. Aramis tucks the comb away in his discarded doublet, and joins Porthos, looking down at Athos on the bed.

“It's a shame he treats himself that way really,” says Aramis.

“Yeah,” says Porthos. “He ought to get a rest once in a while.”

“From you two?” asks Athos dryly.

“Shush,” says Aramis, and pulls the covers back.

“It's like he doesn't seem to know what kind of person he is, at all.”

It's Porthos who says it, when the creaking and shuffling is done and they're settled body to body, back to chest.

“Yes,” says Aramis quietly. They're still talking as if Athos isn't here. “Or worse, that he thinks he's some kind of monster when he's not.”

“Come off it,” says Porthos. “You'd hate yourself if you killed your own wife.”

“And I wouldn't know what to think if she came back from the dead.”

“Yeah.” He feels Porthos nod. “Not an easy one, that. I'd say he did well to stay sane at all.”

“Certainly makes it understandable the way he drinks.”

“He drinks too much,” says Porthos. His hand closes protectively on Athos's side, and Athos feels suddenly ashamed.

Aramis turns onto his other side, facing Athos; in the moonlight Athos can just make out his face.

“When I was younger,” says Aramis, as if to Porthos still, “I used to think that there was a moment in your life when God intervened. Suddenly you'd just heal from whatever had hurt you, you'd go back to being how you were before the pain.”

“What about now?” Porthos asks.

“I think that some wounds leave scars,” says Aramis. “The wounds of the body and also the wounds of the mind. A man with a scarred limb must stretch it, or slowly become a cripple as it shrinks down; and sometimes the scars of the mind must be cared for as well.”

“I wouldn't know how to do that,” says Porthos.

“You simply need to understand what made the wound.” Aramis's hand finds Athos's, warm beneath the blankets in the dark.

“Athos,” he says, “you've been through more these past months than any of us know. I cannot say how much respect we have for you now; after all that she did to you you still spared her life.”

“If it had been her with that sword on you, you'd be dead,” says Porthos.

At this Aramis does address Porthos directly, lifting his head  to look him in the eyes. “And in refusing to kill her, Athos proved himself the better man. It is for God to judge that woman now.”

“Let's just hope she gets to meet him nice and fast,” mutters Porthos sourly.

Aramis pauses and gives a brief, wry laugh. He settles down and looks to Athos's face again. "To my mind, the judgement is the life she already has. I cannot think what it must be like to live so cut off from everything and everyone, as if you were a fortress bristling with cannons. To never spend a quiet, peaceful evening with dear friends."

"Huh." Athos feels the other man nod against him once more. His breath is warm on Athos's neck, his hand heavy and his heat a comfort to his back; against his chest Aramis's body resonates with each word he speaks. Athos is tucked tight between them, warm and so deeply at ease he can rarely remember feeling the like. Aramis makes a valid point, he agrees.

“But that's not what we came here for,” says Aramis. He lays his hand over Athos's heart. “The scar is here, and I think that to help it stretch, we must always remind Athos what he is. I think that after love has cut him so deep, he can no longer remember that for himself.” He pauses. “You are strong, Athos. You are good. And we love you. You did what you had to do, and there could be no actions more just under the sky.”

Athos's throat suddenly closes with emotion, and he clasps Aramis's hand in both his own, lifting it to kiss his knuckles. Aramis presses his forehead to Athos's, and Porthos slings his arm across them both.

“What he said,” says Porthos, and squeezes both of them tight.

 

The next day d'Artagnan finds himself trying not to stare as Athos strides across the courtyard. His back is straight and his shoulders strong; gone is the malevolent slouch he's accustomed to wear. He's even cleaned his hair up and found a clean shirt. Porthos looks happy to see him so glad; Aramis is busy with polishing a saddle, all quiet pride.

“What did he get up to last night?” asks d'Artagnan, sidling over to his friends.

“I couldn't tell you,” says Porthos.

“None of our business,” Aramis replies.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perfect. Now can I have my own Porthos and Aramis? Please?


End file.
